“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”

— Edmund Burke , book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France

Last update July 11, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government." by Edmund Burke?

Edmund Burke 270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

Related quotes

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

“There is nothing so imperious as feebleness which feels itself supported by force.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

“Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

"Aggression is Wrong" essay (1963) published by Rampart College.

“The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.

“That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Context: To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man…